Entrepreneurship in public services: the concept and development of a service science graduate program

Although entrepreneurship and innovation are widely studied phenomena, research on entrepreneurship management in public services is scarse. This paper focuses attention on entrepreneurship managerial aspects and provides for relevant implications for management and service research. This article aims at contributing to a better understanding of internal entrepreneurship in public service sector by extending entrepreneurship research developed in a purely private context. The paper seeks to shed light on the mechanisms that increase the probability of successful implementation of an innovation in public service context. The study is an exploratory analysis of internal entrepreneurship based on participated ethnography. The final conceptual model is therefore rooted in literature at the crossroad between entrepreneurship and innovation, entrepreneurship and public context and multistakeholder theory and experiential evidence The results highlight differences between entrepreneurship in a private and public services setting, where entrepreneurship in public setting is the result of systemic entrepreneurship where consensus is core and performance measurement systems and monitoring tools are a key for conflict resolution and consensus building. The paper provides and insight in entrepreneurship mechanisms in services by highlighting the fundamental role of performance measurements systems conceived as organizational tools. The implications for public services management are strategies to foster and implements successfully innovation and entrepreneurship.